Mark Liberman: For decades, people have been worrying about declines in literacy rates, and even steeper declines in how many people read how many books, especially among students. For a striking recent example, see Niall Ferguson, “Without Books We Will Be Barbarians”, The Free Press 10/10/2025 — that article’s sub-head is “It is not the road to serfdom that awaits — but the steep downward slope to the status of a peasant in ancient Egypt”. Although I mostly agree with the ar...
